I don't think thats fair. If I'm heading downwind, and I see another boat going deeper, I have to evaluate if they had a favorable shift, or that's just a quality of the boat. Should I keep going higher and faster, or should I gybe to cover? Instead of being automatic, the decision now requires calculation.

It's true that you can't get away with playing "follow the leader" in a handicap race (is that a bad thing?), at least not if you have a fast boat. But you also can't ignore the other boats on the course and the information that they give you on wind variation. You also need to pay very close attention to differences in sailing charcteristics when starting and rounding marks.

So instead of just knowing about the characteristics of my own boat, I now have to know the characteristics of all the other boats in my start. This results in a race that's more rich in complexity and potential strategies then one-design racing.

I think all of this has given me a much better feel for the tradeoffs between speed and heading - which is the central theme of catamaran sailing - then I would have learned from one-design racing. OTOH, I probably haven't learned as much as I might have about tacking and rounding marks cleanly.